Into the (Spot)light

By

Terry Teachout

January 27, 2012

ENLARGE

Cynthia Nixon in 'Wit.'
Joan Marcus

New York

Margaret Edson's "Wit" is one of a surprisingly large number of plays that managed to win a Pulitzer Prize without first making it to Broadway. Fourteen years after it opened Off-Broadway, "Wit" is finally being presented by the Manhattan Theatre Club in its Broadway house. Why the delay? No doubt the release of Mike Nichols's 2001 cable-television version, which starred Emma Thompson, had something to do with it. The biggest roadblock, however, is that "Wit" is the story of the death of a woman suffering from late-stage ovarian cancer. The only way to get so dark a play to Broadway nowadays is to hire a big name, and it seems more than likely that this revival, directed by Lynne Meadow, would never have opened there had Cynthia Nixon not agreed to be the star.

Wit

Unfortunately, Ms. Nixon's acting is part of what's wrong with the production, for she plays Vivian Bearing, the austere, loveless scholar of 17th-century poetry around whose terrible plight "Wit" revolves, as though she were a precocious schoolgirl rather than a full-grown, forbiddingly chilly intellectual. Only when suffering strips away Vivian's defenses does Ms. Nixon come into her own, and by then it's too late for her to overcome the lightweight impression that she's already made.

What else is wrong with this "Wit"? In the 1990s it was still comparatively unusual to see a fatal illness portrayed in anything like a candid way onstage or on the screen. Nowadays, though, such portrayals are common enough that the play's initial shock effect has been significantly diminished, making its flaws easier to perceive and harder to forgive. Foremost among them is the inaptly cloying archness with which Vivian addresses the audience from start to finish ("It is not my intention to give away the plot, but I think I die at the end"). This archness is purposeful—it is Ms. Edson's way of showing us how completely Vivian is out of touch with her feelings—but the cute self-mockery to which she stoops, which is italicized and underlined by Ms. Nixon's acting, is no more believable than the haze of sentiment through which her agonizing death is seen.

Here, too, I suspect that the passage of time has worked against Ms. Edson, if only because so many of the baby boomers who saw "Wit" the first time around have since learned from personal experience that the last part of the play only begins to suggest the ugly horrors of a painful death. Next to the real thing, "Wit" amounts to little more than cancer porn, a dress-up game in which the valiant victim strides off the stage and into the light without once having thrown up all over her hospital gown. Even on "House," they do better than that.

***

The Motherf**ker With the Hat

Gladys Ramirez and Arturo Fernandez in 'The MotherF**ker With the Hat.
George Schiavone

The best new play of 2011 had the worst title, which helps to explain why Stephen Adly Guirgis's "The Motherf**ker With the Hat" (as it was officially billed) barely eked out a 112-performance run on Broadway. Now it belongs to the regional theaters, and GableStage, one of Florida's top companies, has mounted a first-class production that confirms my initial impression of its excellence.

Mr. Guirgis's play is an antiromantic romcom about the effects of the therapeutic culture on a group of substance abusers. It's smart, concise (95 minutes, no intermission) and full of pointed punch lines ("If you ever need money for rehab or an exorcism, let me know"). All five characters are drawn with sympathetic sharpness, meaning that the play must be cast very, very well in order to hit the bull's-eye. Chris Rock, the star of the Broadway production, was new to the stage, and his performance, not surprisingly, was promising but far from great. By contrast, GableStage's Ethan Henry, who has plenty of regional-theater experience, is self-assured and commanding in the same role, that of a slick, sociopathic scamster. Gladys Ramirez shines no less brightly as Veronica, the foul-mouthed working-class babe whose brass-plated charms set Mr. Guirgis's farce-style plot in motion. Elizabeth Rodriguez, who played the part on Broadway, was as hot as a pepper mill but the least little bit too slick to be quite right, whereas Ms. Ramirez comes across much like someone you might meet on the street.

Alex Alvarez, Arturo Fernandez and Betsy Graver are all comparable in quality to their New York counterparts, and Joseph Adler's satisfyingly straightforward staging leaves nothing at all to be desired. Yes, I was thrilled by the play's Broadway premiere, but I'm sure it would have made as lasting an impression had I seen it for the first time at GableStage.

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